UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #5

[Pinkizzy]

It looks like a witness has made a statement after 37 years with a sighting of the suspect somewhere. Colin Sutton is investigating the Bunny Girl murders and one witness came forward after nearly 50 years

 

[lee sumner]

@lee sumner, NB: quote from article upthread, SL was talking to her father about her purchasing plans, extensively, on last night before she went missing. Her parents only wished they had ‘taken her more seriously’. Some deal had been apparently struck between her and a Sturgis client. A joint purchase.

She had tried and fairly recently failed to sell the flat. More than once.

A new man, possibly irrelevant, but the new international, Mayfair man [source AS] had become closer when AL away. Not named in book [AS] but named in Press at time. She may have planned to see him on Sunday.

It’s interesting to note AS was asked to change/omit an inconsequential detail from his manuscript. I don’t believe this new man played any nefarious role but could the butterfly effect have played out if minor details changed?

We do know SL was on phone, apparently to pub, in a big rush ‘half sitting, half standing’ moments before leaving office, book suggests to the ‘Landlord’s wife’ [AS].

Her address/notebook/diary

Pocket sized & seemingly vitally important, CV told DV she said ‘my diary, have you got my diary’? DV also flags that others don’t remember seeing it before.

AS

He interviewed some/many of those he outlines in book, not just blindly going on police narrative. He wasn’t infallible but some of the accounts are very detailed & he was/is a stellar investigative journalist.

thanks for the info. i was wondering when you was going to send the article. i believe SLP had 2 people view her flat, but these viewings fell through, but she was hoping to clinch a sale soon.

 

[WestLondoner]

What was your/others interpretation of ND, the witness, that DV tracked down? I noted also that there as an Irish man who worked as a cellar man in the POW, separate from ND. [DV]. ND episode, P.157 DV:

'He'd [ND] remembered the house as it was one he particularly liked' [NB: photos of it at time, run down, of course may have spotted potential etc, but aesthetically on the face of it?].

'ND wasn't his real name, it couldn't be, he'd used an alias' [DV]

'He described the woman as clutching a set of keys in her right hand on a large yellow tag and looking out toward the street'. [DV]

'Why was his account of events such a perfect fit for their [the police's] ...story' P.159, DV

If ND saw SL holding the keys on a bright, yellow, large fob he's a very important witness indeed.

DV is sceptical of the reliability of this account because the witness took several weeks to come forward with it and then apparently added nothing that he could not have seen in the TV reconstruction.

I'm a bit sceptical of the 37SR sightings generally because you only ever hear the one where it's Cannan outside at 1pm and QED. In the various TV documentaries you never hear it mentioned that she might not even have taken the keys; that she left no trace of having been inside; that other witnesses gave different descriptions; that HR later ID'ed a 45 year old man as the late-20s-ish Mr Kipper; that several of the supposed "corroborating" witnesses actually undermine the 1pm sighting by seeing something different perhaps as late as 4pm; that several other sightings in 37SR are never explained, such as the two white Fiestas seen or the two men seen waiting in a dark car (JC and JT?).

Interestingly, DV and the police agree that BW's sighting at 2.45pm didn't happen and she got the day wrong, but for different reasons - DV thinks SJL was already dead at the PoW by that time, while the police preferred to believe WJ who said the car was in Stevenage Road at that time, not in FPR.

Of all the sightings, I personally reckon only BW's is accurate. SJL possibly met someone at 37SR, but never went inside and was instead persuaded to drive someone elsewhere. The logistics and car management required for this suggest to me that any Mr Kipper had an accomplice.

 

[Terryb808]

The SR witnesses all tend to contradict each other, so it’s a bit of a mess. Doesn’t reflect well on the Met, they went with it without question.

DV has to ignore BW because it sinks his narrative completely, she was already dead according to DV

On the other hand the police have no reason whatsoever to ignore BW because it could have actually been their prime suspect JC next to SJL.

I agree with WestLondoner that BW is correct and it was SJL she saw, big question is where were they going, and exactly when did SJL’s car appear in Stevenage Road.
The time BW saw SJL in FPR and the time her car was back in SR dictate how far they went.

This theory depends on there being a single perpetrator, she could have ended up anywhere is there were two perpetrators,

 

[Terryb808]

Just a quick note to follow on from the above.

To have any idea of what happened to SJL on the 28th July 1986 we need an anchor point.

If this anchor point is the BW sighting at 2.30pm on the FPR it doesn’t really matter where she went between 12.40 and 2,30pm.

Yes it would be good to establish this, but what is important is what happened after 2.30pm and who was her male passenger.

 

[lee sumner]

The police were lax at the time and (maybe the lack of resources is responsible) started lengthy enquiries, then just gave up.

When you look at other cases that have been solved (against the odds) it’s only happened because the officer in charge took a single minded approach and didn’t give up.

We seem to focus on the loss of the diary (Friday / Sunday), this is IMO only important if it had a butterfly effect.

There’s no evidence that JC took the diary in the PoW on Friday evening. What is odd is that AL changed his story when he was interviewed by DV. At this point DV had not released his book, so AL couldn’t have know that DV believed SJL was murdered in the PoW.

It’s possible that all those closely involved are 100% behind the police narrative. DV departing from this when he interviewed AL results in his abrupt response.
That might also explain is rather odd comment “ You’ll never find her, no one will”.

If I could ask AL one question it would be to clarify this statement.

Regards to what AS withheld, his content that covers her time on the QE2 is certainly not what DL would have approved of.
So if this made it into the book, you have to ask yourself what the withheld content must have been.

After all this time it’s surprising that this withheld material has not come to light.

i have always been curious about the SLP secret that AS kept out of his book. i would love to know.

 

[Terryb808]

i have always been curious about the SLP secret that AS kept out of his book. i would love to know.

Well AFAIK the secret has never escaped, what is interesting and maybe linked to her disappearance is the joint property purchase.

If I’m correct (thanks to LSW) then SJL was pulling out of this deal. Depending on what this deal entails and how much the other partner put into the venture.
If he lost a lot of money he just might have been very angry indeed.

 

[lee sumner]

I think it might well have been possible to repatriate the diary (I’ve done so before by detective work & ringing around, but maybe CV cut to chase by calling her bank). (chequebook with diary).

The police gave up halfway through checking out the owners of the very definitive BMW seem in Shorrolds too, age/class etc, lack of resources I think.

IMO what was ‘kept back’ & the diary didn’t point directly to numerous lovers.

AS didn’t give any specific details.

i would love to know what they found out about SLP. AS kept it out of his book, but i have always been curious about what she did.

 

[WestLondoner]

To have any idea of what happened to SJL on the 28th July 1986 we need an anchor point.

If this anchor point is the BW sighting at 2.30pm on the FPR it doesn’t really matter where she went between 12.40 and 2,30pm.

Great point. The 2.30 sighting really did need to be explained away, by the police in 1986 and by DV in 2021, because if it happened then the rest of their respective suppositions fall apart.

If BW is right and she was in her car in the FPR at 2.30, then WJ is wrong and she wasn't at 123SR at 12.50. We thus have to toss the entire 123SR stuff in the bin and all we know is that her car was there by 5.15 when the chap who came home from work found it overlapping his garage. As you say, it also then matters not what - if anything - went down at 37SR, because 2 hours later she was still driving around alive and well. She was not at liberty to just absent herself from the office for 2 hours without explanation, so I am sure per BW that she would indeed have been "looking serious" at this point. She went somewhere else and didn't survive, and someone tall enough to need to move her car seat then drove her car to 123SR and left it there.

Another point about 37SR not often made is that it was on at an asking price of £128,000. That is actually not very much by west London 1986 standards. For comparison I moved to London in 1988 in my early 20s and had a budget of £105,000. If this was Cannan posing as a prosperous house buyer ten years older than that, he should have had a lot more to spend than £128k, especially if he aimed to impress a woman like SJL with how loaded he was. He should have been giving off vibes of being a City trader on £125k a year, which was entirely possible in 1986. To get her attention he'd need to be looking for seven bedrooms in Chelsea for £500k, not three bedrooms in the Earl's Court @rse-end of Fulham for a quarter of that. A thirtysomething bloke looking to spend £120-odd k was in fact no better off than SJL, and perhaps less so.

 

[WestLondoner]

i would love to know what they found out about SLP. AS kept it out of his book, but i have always been curious about what she did.

Me too. I'm curious about what she did that was both so sensitive it couldn't be talked about yet was so unimportant it made no difference to the investigation.

We can infer a bit though, I think. There are clues. In terms of things said, her parents were quite churchy and observed that she "did not live her life as [they] would have done"; AS said the omitted material was "more News of the World"; and all the police would say was that she 'was a modern young woman'.

I think we can eliminate drug dealing or most other forms of crime as too critical a line of inquiry not to have leaked out. Casual drug use seems quite possible though. She smoked cigarettes, so may have smoked other things and this could still be consistent with that police choice of words.

It seems unlikely she was on the game. Someone would have known, it would have leaked, and I doubt the police would have characterised being actually on the game as normal for "a modern young woman".

When the parents tried to protect her "reputation" it seems most likely to me that it was her sexual reputation they meant. If all she had done was sleep successively with each of her blokes in the usual way, the parents would regard that as shameful, but the police might well say it was just "modern" and if that's all she did, AS would hardly have described this as "News of the World" material.

So whatever it was went beyond that. A propos, I note that she was adept at keeping her social contacts segregated, she even had a secret diary nobody knew about, and AS has her either three- or possibly four-timing AL when she disappeared.

Taken together, I would guess that the stuff removed possibly related to prior drug use, perhaps among the QE2 crowd, the wealthy West End crowd or both; and in addition she probably had a body count at the high end of normal, and a rapid turnover.

The police would consider all of that within the normal bounds of modern women's behaviour, it would dismay her parents, AS would agree the combination of it all took it into News of the World territory ("Suzy's sex and drug orgies shame aboard QE2"), and if it came out, it would be adverse to public co-operation. In short it would fit all the hints dropped, and it would suit everyone for it not to emerge.

JMO

 

[Cherwell]

The police would consider all of that within the normal bounds of modern women's behaviour, it would dismay her parents, AS would agree the combination of it all took it into News of the World territory ("Suzy's sex and drug orgies shame aboard QE2"), and if it came out, it would be adverse to public co-operation. In short it would fit all the hints dropped, and it would suit everyone for it not to emerge.

ISTR an anecdote (presumably from the AS book) about her getting very drunk on the QE2 and having to be helped back to her cabin. Whereupon she got up again and went to a man's cabin, stripped off and got into bed with him. I think this was the one who later became a regular boyfriend.

If the parents didn't object to that being in the book, I can't imagine what it was that they did object to.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

i would love to know what they found out about SLP. AS kept it out of his book, but i have always been curious about what she did.

Susannah Lamplugh's initials are SJL.

As you seem to make some effort to repeatedly type SLP even after having been already made aware of this, I'm starting to wonder if you're on an agenda here?

Do you have some purpose to keep distorting the initials? Are you trying to create a link with JC that isn't really there? Can you not acknowledge that this is coming off really badly as it's terribly disrespectful to the victim, her family, her loved ones, all who knew her and even just us lot here?

If you're struggling to get it right then why don't you try using 'Suzy' or 'Susannah' or 'SL' instead of the three letters?

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

ISTR an anecdote (presumably from the AS book) about her getting very drunk on the QE2 and having to be helped back to her cabin. Whereupon she got up again and went to a man's cabin, stripped off and got into bed with him. I think this was the one who later became a regular boyfriend.

If the parents didn't object to that being in the book, I can't imagine what it was that they did object to.

I think it could be drug use for the simple fact that back in those days even cannabis use could land you with a criminal record. If she was known for now and then taking coke when offered, her father being a legal man would not have wanted it in the records that she was linked to unlawful class A drug use. Especially as there would always be hope she'd return from 'somewhere' and he wouldn't want her future status to be affected - there's some countries such as the USA where they won't let you in on a travel visa if you're known for drug use.

Maybe she wasn't the sort of person who would have a clue how to buy from an actual drug dealer and therefore the police didn't see how occasional recreational use could be related to her death? JMO MOO just an idea, no evidence of this.

 

[lee sumner]

I think it might well have been possible to repatriate the diary (I’ve done so before by detective work & ringing around, but maybe CV cut to chase by calling her bank). (chequebook with diary).

The police gave up halfway through checking out the owners of the very definitive BMW seem in Shorrolds too, age/class etc, lack of resources I think.

IMO what was ‘kept back’ & the diary didn’t point directly to numerous lovers.

AS didn’t give any specific details.

maybe SLP had a threesome when working on the QE2. was it something sexual that AS kept out of his book.

 

[WestLondoner]

maybe SLP had a threesome when working on the QE2. was it something sexual that AS kept out of his book.

see post #723

 

[lee sumner]

Susannah Lamplugh's initials are SJL.

As you seem to make some effort to repeatedly type SLP even after having been already made aware of this, I'm starting to wonder if you're on an agenda here?

Do you have some purpose to keep distorting the initials? Are you trying to create a link with JC that isn't really there? Can you not acknowledge that this is coming off really badly as it's terribly disrespectful to the victim, her family, her loved ones, all who knew her and even just us lot here?

If you're struggling to get it right then why don't you try using 'Suzy' or 'Susannah' or 'SL' instead of the three let

 

[lee sumner]

No, it doesn't. Her name was Susanna Jane Lamplugh.

i know her name, but SLP also fits in my opinion.

 

[lee sumner]

SJL it is from now on.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

i know her name, but SLP also fits in my opinion.

Are you saying that you refuse to use the correct initials of the victim and are replacing them with other initials that are not hers? I am very confused and I think this needs to be a matter to refer to admin for consideration as something does seem right about that JMO MOO.

ETA: Apologies, just saw further to post saying you will use SJL from now on. JMO but I think that is the right thing to do.

 

[Cherwell]

i know her name, but SLP also fits in my opinion.

Where are you getting the P from?
None of her names begin with P, and any other random letter in a name is not an initial.